Who do you turn to for those big financial decisions in life?

The landscape is changing in the financial services space. Financial planners are moving away, due to government intervention, from commission based selling and accountants are now held more accountable for taxation returns they help produce and submit to the Australia Taxation Office and Mortgage Brokers have been licensed for a reasonable period of time now, meaning they too are more accountable from a responsible lending perspective. All these changes have resulted in the professional advisory landscape changing.

Financial planners and your tax agent accountants are now no longer the leaders when it comes to giving budgeting, cashflow and finance advice. More and more consumers are asking the question of their Mortgage Brokers “what should I do about…?” when it comes to moving houses, affording a new property, turning their existing property into an investment property, can they afford to have a baby, how should they structure their finances to best accommodate such decisions.

In logical terms it makes more sense that an experienced, qualified and investment savvy licensed mortgage broker is going to be better placed to provide cashflow assumptions and budgeting assessments, because under the licensing laws in which they operate they must undertake assessments of an applicant’s income and also their ability to adequately meet the repayments of any loan they make take out, so this would lead to enquiring around household spending and alike.

A word of warning though – like any industry, there are better practitioners than others, and if you are going to seek finance advice from a mortgage/finance broker or an accountant or financial planner, be sure to ask them to clearly demonstrate their calculations and assumptions they are using to ensure they best reflect your situation and are reasonable assumptions.

It’s well documented that here at Empower Wealth; we provide extensive cash flow modelling, wealth simulations outcomes, budgeting and retirement planning advisory services. In our firm, we are a little more advanced as we use the teaching and talents of all three professions referred to above to assist our clients make the best financial decisions around their money and their future.